People have all sorts of ways to hide windows from their view on a Mac. Some folks drag them off the screen, others minimize them to the Dock, and still others prefer to close windows so they don’t exist at all.

However, there’s a very simple way to clear the screen of a clutter of windows associated with a given application: Hide the application. I’ve mentioned this a few times in passing, such as in Application Switcher and Mac Interface Basics, but never given its due with a proper explanation.

Hiding an application causes all of its visible and minimized windows to disappear at once. There are three easy ways to accomplish this.

Hide using menu bar

Hide Using Menu Bar

When you are in an application, you can hide it with the command in the application menu (the first menu to the right of the  menu, on the left side of the menu bar).

In every application, the keyboard shortcut is Command+H. To hide all applications besides the current one, use the adjacent command, Hide Others (Command+Option+H).

Hide using Dock menu

Hide Using Dock Icon

You can also right-click (or Control+click) on an application’s Dock icon and choose Hide from that menu.

Hide Using App Switcher

While using the application switcher, select any application and tap H on the keyboard.

Dim app Dock icons when hidden

Dim Hidden Apps in Dock

One way to know that an application is hidden is to dim its Dock icon. This Terminal command will do the trick:

defaults write com.apple.dock showhidden -bool TRUE; killall Dock

To run this command, triple-click the paragraph above and copy it, open the Terminal application on your Mac, and paste. If the command doesn’t instantly run, press Return. To reverse the effect, run the same command but change TRUE to FALSE.

If you don’t know how to work with Terminal or need help, feel free to reach out.

To reveal all of an app’s windows that were hidden, just as they were before, simply revisit the application. You can do this by:

  • Clicking the app icon on the Dock
  • Using the application switcher
  • Double-clicking the app in the Finder
  • Opening the app via Launchpad or Spotlight
  • Any other method you have to open an application

That’s it! How much clutter are you able to clear temporarily in order to maintain your computing sanity? If you can live without those windows for a while, do you need them at all? Comment below…